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Weird of Oz Wishes you a Happy Easter

Weird of Oz Wishes you a Happy Easter

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Mixed-media collage by Nick Ozment

Happy Easter! Or, if you do not celebrate that holiday, happy celebration of spring and the goddess of fertility!

I have nothing to review or to report today. I will soon be following my young children around as they fill their baskets with eggs. But for those of you who snuck away from the ham and hardboiled eggs long enough to log on and drop by, I wanted to be here to chat at the Gate a minute or two.

This weird blog of Oz’s is about three months old; last week, its entries entered the double digits. Today, for post number 11 (“This blog goes up to 11.” And thumbs up to those of you who get that allusion), I thought I’d mention a few of the projects I have in the works for upcoming posts. And, if you’re feeling chatty, you could help me out by letting me know if any topic in particular piques your interest, which may influence my prioritizing.

  • I’m reading Manly Wade Wellman’s complete John Thunstone collection, which I recently won in a Black Gate giveaway. When I’m done, I’ll post a review.
  • I have a stack of the complete run of Arak, Son of Thunder that is just crying out for a series of issue-by-issue breakdowns.
  • In a follow-up to an earlier post, I’d like to do an episode-by-episode guide to the new Scooby-Doo series Mystery Inc., “annotated” to note the fantasy/sci-fi/horror allusions and references peppered throughout.
  • In another follow-up, I’m hankering to try some more single-player RPGs similar to the Fighting Fantasy books that I reviewed a couple weeks back.
  • As I said from the outset, a large part of what fuels the engine of this blog is nostalgia. In that vein, I’ll be revisiting some vintage fantasy board games like Dungeon!.
  • Also — top secret confidential hush hush — over the past few years I’ve been doing some research to uncover the sources or inspirations for certain D&D monsters that burst straight from the mind of Gary Gygax, i.e., iconic D&D monsters that have no clear antecedent in myth or folklore (the rust monster, for example).
  • The last two comments to last week’s post inspired me to begin writing a piece considering the spectrum of RPG game-masters and players ranging across the continuum between pure gamers (the rules sticklers) and storytellers (those who may consult the dice, but the GM’s final call is always more bound to the service of the unfolding narrative over and above any game rules).

There are more — always more ideas floating around up here in this egg than I can pursue to all their rabbit holes — but I’ll leave it there for now.

See you in April.

Kirk Versus Gorn: The Rematch

Kirk Versus Gorn: The Rematch

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Star Trek GornWe like video games. We love Star Trek. And we believe William Shatner is the genetic template for a future race of supermen.

But when all three come together, as they have in this video spot for the upcoming Star Trek: The Video Game?

Magic.

Check out the YouTube video below, and you’ll understand.

Star Trek: The Video Game will be released April 23, 2013 for the Xbox, PS3, and PC. It was developed by Digital Extremes. Get more details at the website, www.startrekgame.com.

[Thanks to SF Signal for the tip.]

New Treasures: Gygax Magazine, Issue #1

New Treasures: Gygax Magazine, Issue #1

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Gygax Magazine 1I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the hottest thing in role playing at the moment  is the rise of OSR. The Old School Renaissance has captured the interest of thousands of players — many returning to gaming for the first time in decades — and fostered the birth of a fresh generation of dynamic new companies. We’ve featured some of the best products here on the BG blog, including Carcosa, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Labyrinth Lord, and even the first edition Premium AD&D reprints from WotC. But truthfully this is just a small sample, and more exciting products are arriving daily.

In fact, even though the number of OSR players is still fairly small, in a strange way that’s part of the appeal. The size of the market, and the out-sized level of excitement and productivity associated with it, reminds players of the early days of D&D in the mid-70s, when only a core group of gamers were tuned in to the new phenomenon that would soon sweep the country. That was a tremendously exciting and dynamic time, and in some ways it feels like it’s happening all over again.

One thing that’s been lacking from this generation’s gaming renaissance though is a clear center. Ask old-school gamers what the center of the genre used to be, and most will give you the same answer: Tim Kask’s The Dragon, the print magazine published by TSR (and later WotC and Paizo) from 1976 to 2007, and published online since 2007. Launched to help nurture the rapidly growing fandom around Dungeons & Dragons, Dragon gradually became the publication for role-players of all persuasions. The magazine embraced the entire genre, and accepted advertising from virtually everyone, publishing news, unbiased reviews, and articles of interest to everyone in the hobby. To read Dragon was to be informed of everything of real importance to the industry, especially in the early days.

Dragon was essential to the growth of adventure gaming. The creators driving the fledgling OSR industry have managed to capture the spirit of original D&D, and the excitement it spawned, surpassingly well, and that’s led many to wonder: would it be possible to re-create the magic of the early Dragon as well? As the folks behind Gygax magazine — including Ernie and Luke Gygax, and The Dragon‘s founding editor, Tim Kask — have proven with their first issue, it is possible. The similarities with its spiritual parent magazine don’t end with the familiar name of the publisher: TSR, Inc.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu, Part Four

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu, Part Four

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Trail TitanTrail WingateSax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from April 28 to July 14, 1934. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The book marked the first time Rohmer employed third person narrative in the series and dispensed with the first person narrative voice modeled on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. The results dilute what would otherwise have been a stronger novel that saw the series return to its roots.

The story picks up in the aftermath of the Limehouse explosion one week earlier. Surprisingly, Sam Pak’s opium den only sustained minor structural damage. No bodies have been recovered, nor did the police launch sight any boat escaping on the Thames prior to the explosion. Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Chief Inspector Gallaho are hopeful that Fu Manchu might actually be dead, but unless bodies are recovered, Smith does not feel secure.

The matron watching over Fleurette Petrie during her captivity abandoned her post the night of the explosion, as did the Asian sidewalk vendor who kept vigil outside Sir Denis’s apartment. Smith takes both signs as suggestive that Fu Manchu is still at liberty. Proof arrives soon enough in the form of the constable who had the misfortune of standing guard at Pietro Ambroso’s studio at the beginning of the book. The constable leads Smith and Gallaho to chat up a night watchman on his beat, suggesting the man might have information that he will not completely share with the police. Smith passes himself off as a newspaperman and gains the night watchman’s trust through his generous nature and gift of gab. The man tells him how one week earlier, on the night of the Limehouse explosion, he saw a small party of Chinamen emerge from a manhole on the deserted street in the dead of night. Smith agrees it is an interesting story and that the police would never have believed him.

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Goth Chick News: More Fun Than A Pile of Zombies

Goth Chick News: More Fun Than A Pile of Zombies

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image004This week, Paramount Pictures released the first theatrical posters for Marc Forster’s World War Z, the zombie apocalypse movie based on the book by the same name, coming to a theater near you on June 21.

Starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox, and David Morse, both sheets display a mile-high pile of rotting, decaying zombies attacking a helicopter.

Now that’s what I call entertainment.

World War Z has been gaining notoriety ever since action stills of Pitt on set started hitting the Internet. The adaptation of author Max Brooks’s ‘oral history of the zombie war’ has had fans buzzing from the get-go, since the format of the book involved a U.N. employee interviewing survivors of the zompocalypse about their experiences – and the stills appear to show something entirely different.

Having just finished the book myself, I can understand the debate.

The WWZ novel is outstanding for its unusual approach to the first-person narrative, representing a possibly problematic format to translate to film.

Forster could have created the story in the style of a faux documentary, and initial chatter on the underground grapevine indicated that the WWZ film would indeed go this route, with U.N. worker Gerry Lane’s (Pitt) survivor interviews being the basis for flashback footage of grisly, zombie-war action.

It now appears WWZ the movie will be a significant departure from Brooks’s novel in both structure and story.

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Kissing My Axe

Kissing My Axe

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Kiss My AxeI’ve written previously about starting Sword’s Edge Publishing, mistakes I made in running the company, and publishing Sword Noir. When the time came to publish Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death, a role-playing game of Viking mayhem, I tried to follow the trail I had blazed with Sword Noir. If I mention the best laid plans of mice and men, you may see where I’m going here.

Sword Noir worked out because I knew everyone with whom I worked. I knew my friends wouldn’t let me down. Unfortunately, Ed Northcott, who did the art for Sword Noir (and was an industry professional long before working on my game) had quit as a freelance artist. A friend’s wife introduced me to an artist of her acquaintance who wanted to get into the RPG industry. I saw his portfolio and we made a deal. He would have accepted much less, but I wanted to pay the standard referenced by Steve Jackson Games – trying to be a professional over here.

I gave the artist three specific scenes I wanted to see and left the fourth to his imagination, suggesting anything inspired by the movie The 13th Warrior or the comic series Northlanders. I sent along links to pics on the Internet which could provide inspiration and references.

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Spring 2013 Issue of Subterranean Magazine now Available

Spring 2013 Issue of Subterranean Magazine now Available

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Subterranean Spring 2013Subterranean is a terrific magazine. You’d think that a quarterly publication schedule would give me plenty of time to read each issue, but no — I’m still finishing the Winter issue, dang it.

Nonethless, we have a job to do here. And that job is to tell you all about the sumptuous contents of the latest issue, even if we can’t read it yet (sob).

Here’s the complete table of contents:

  • “The Seafarer,” by Tobias S. Buckell
  • “Painted Birds and Shivered Bones,” by Kat Howard
  • “A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura,” by Jay Lake
  • “The Indelible Dark,” by William Browning Spencer
  • “The Prayer of Ninety Cats,” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
  • “The Syndrome,” by Brian Francis Slattery

Subterranean Press recently announced a fresh crop of fabulous fantasy, including The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Catherynne M. Valente, The Best of Joe Haldeman, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K Wolfe, Five Autobiographies and a Fiction by Lucius Shepard, and many other delights. Get the latest at their website.

Subterranean is edited by William Schafer and published quarterly. The Spring 2013 issue is completely free and available here; see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered Subterranean magazine with their previous issue, Winter 2013.

Adventure on Film: Why Hollywood Gets it Wrong

Adventure on Film: Why Hollywood Gets it Wrong

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star-trek-game-beams-up-in-april-2013.jpgAs I write this, April is just around the corner, and now that Hollywood’s best and brightest studios no longer know how to calculate the beginning of summer, I smell blockbuster season ripening fast on the vine. Just think, in mere weeks, we can all flock to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, Wolverine, Oblivion, Pacific Rim, Elysium, and Man of Steel.

What do nearly all of these movies have in common? I’ll tell you, spoiler-free: the fate of the world will hang in the balance.

Which is why I shall be staying home –– again –– for blockbuster season. If I have learned anything in all my forays into drama, it is this: cinema offers no more boring subject, no greater snoozefest, than global peril.

Heresy, I know.

But I’m right. Here’s why.

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Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Part 1: The Movie

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Part 1: The Movie

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Tarzan Valley of Gold MOD DVDTarzan and the Valley of Gold wastes no time telling viewers of the mid-1960s that this was not going to be their grandfather’s Tarzan. Or their father’s either. With swinging ‘60s big band jazz backed with bongos playing over a Warholian montage of pop art colors projecting scenes from the movie, it’s impossible not to think JAMES BOND! JAMES BOND! from the moment the opening titles start.

No doubt that was producer Sy Weintraub’s intention with this 1966 outing for Tarzan, the first of a trio starring Mike Henry. The credits sequence is a dead-on imitation of the style of Maurice Binder for Dr. No. After the director’s credit fades, the film hops into a Goldfinger-inspired sweep over a tropical resort city, concluding on a helicopter taking off from a luxury yacht in the harbor. Then, in another scene swiped from Dr. No, assassins shoot a limo driver outside the airport, and an imposter chauffeur awaits the arrival of our handsome hero in his impeccable suit and tie. Cue city montage with more swingin’ Latin big band rhythms! Smash into an action scene where a sunglass-wearing sniper tries to pick off our sharply dressed hero in an empty bullring. The crafty Ape Man turns the tables on the gunman and kills him by dropping a giant Coke Bottle advertising prop onto him. Ah, good times.

Sy Weintraub shows with this opening that he has taken the “New Look” Tarzan he introduced in 1959 in Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure one step further to imitate the stratospheric popularity of spy cinema of the decade. Tarzan not only speaks in complete sentences, but he is comfortable donning civilization’s trappings to travel the world to bring savage ape justice to turtleneck-wearing supervillains who adore exploding watches.

The temptation to go this direction must have been hard to resist: by the start of 1966, Bond-mania was approaching its delirious apex; Thunderball came out in December 1965 and was on its way to becoming one of the highest-grossing movies in history. Bandwagon films are often poor quality imitations, but Sy Weintraub already had a famous character available who could cut a dashing a dangerous figure to put at the center of his attempt to grab some Bond cash. It turned out well, better than you might initially think a “Tarzan goes ’60s spy” film would. Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, currently available as a manufacture-on-demand DVD from Warner Archive, lacks the excellent script, performances, and drama of Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, but it delivers in the breezy fun department.

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Purpose Built Centurion

Purpose Built Centurion

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Centurion RPGThe idea for a role-playing game focused on playing legionaries was in my head as early as August of 2009 when I did a podcast series on playing military characters in role-playing games, and did episodes on Republican Rome, the Civil Wars and the early Empire. I had always loved Roman history and the image of the legion, and I had run games set in Imperial Rome, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, but hadn’t thought about actually designing a game for legionaries.

Then I created Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe, and I realized this was something I could do. I decided it was something I wanted to do. And thus was Centurion: Legionaries of Rome set on its long path to realization.

What’s the point, you might ask, of developing a game with such a specific focus when there are other games out there that could probably do the job? One of the reasons is because I can. The mountain climber answer never appeased anyone, so let me try this: other games might do the job, but what if one wants a game designed for the job. There’s a good chance that game will do the job better.

I spent most of my role-playing life playing with one system: Dungeons & Dragons. Why bother to learn another system when this one does what I want? And, yeah, sometimes it doesn’t do exactly what I want, but it’s close, and I can always house-rule it.

So until a little under a decade ago, I was in the thrall of D&D. Completely. It was not a bad place to be, and let me tell you, I am excited about 5E … or D&D Next … or whatever it’s going to be. I still love D&D and that’s because it does its own thing so well. It has created its own fantasy genre that is different from anything else out there. That doesn’t mean it is the perfect game for all genres.

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